Financial modeling -- what to learn first

So I am looking to pickup some sort of programming skill and am trying to figure out what to learn first. My options seem to be java, c++ or become a master of excel. What do y'all think the best language would be to make me as marketable as possible in the financial and accounting world?

re: Financial modeling -- what to learn first(Posted by reb13 on 6/16/13 at 12:06 pm to Athanatos)

I think my goal is to learn a language so that I can be familiar with it probably not even use it. I have just seen a lot of financial jobs that want someone who can at least understand what they are looking at. But they are vague about what exactly they want you to know.

re: Financial modeling -- what to learn first(Posted by Powerman on 6/16/13 at 2:12 pm to Athanatos)

quote:You really don't need to learn a programming language to become good w/ excel. I know enough VBA to write some macros but rarely use it.

Most of the people I know that use VBA in excel just create exceedingly complicated spreadsheets that serve no function and could have easily been created with some clever ingenuity within the basic framework of excel.

re: Financial modeling -- what to learn first(Posted by lynxcat on 6/16/13 at 2:17 pm to HurricaneDunc)

quote:I would agree with this. And to be honest, I'd be willing to say you could along entirely with Excel in nearly all cases.

Excel works for 95% of cases for someone doing financial analysis. Things like SQL are for database management which should be a precursor to actually doing financial analysis.

One thing that comes to mind that could be too much for excel is if you are doing transactional analyses for a major company. If you have 100 million transactions in a year...well, I don't think Excel is what you want to use to start that analysis.

re: Financial modeling -- what to learn first(Posted by reb13 on 6/16/13 at 2:37 pm to lynxcat)

Thanks for all of the input guys, looks like I will be looking harder in to excel. What piqued my interest was this it is a puzzle of sorts where you have to create a program to identify arbitrage opportunities. I thought it was very interesting and thought about giving it a shot.

re: Financial modeling -- what to learn first(Posted by HurricaneDunc on 6/16/13 at 2:41 pm to lynxcat)

quote:One thing that comes to mind that could be too much for excel is if you are doing transactional analyses for a major company. If you have 100 million transactions in a year...well, I don't think Excel is what you want to use to start that analysis.

Well sure, but that's where SAP and business warehouse come in to play. For the analysis I do every day, I use Excel and Tableau (and Access only to union data sets occasionally). PowerPivot is starting to gain some traction, but I'm not a fan. I'd much rather Tableau.

re: Financial modeling -- what to learn first(Posted by Rockyn on 6/17/13 at 10:43 am to reb13)

I will ditto the sentiment that the solid base Excel foundation is the prerequisite for models and bottles moreso than a language.

The macros and advanced stuff we write/use are usually time-saver oriented or pure bells and whistles as opposed to critical model components.

A language is lagniappe, and parsimony can be a beautiful thing. It can be very frustrating to create a monstrosity and it not work or have to spend hours correcting a screwup in your build design because you wanted to overcomplicate things.

re: Financial modeling -- what to learn first(Posted by AthensTiger on 6/20/13 at 8:36 pm to reb13)

I do financial modeling and agree with excel , access and SQL. Vba is very useful sometimes. Learn how to use excel PowerPivot and you can work with large data sets in Excel, but there are times when Access or t-SQL are a must.